In the lordly manner of conquerors Charles, too, demanded reimbursement for his trouble in bending these free citizens to his illegal will. The reinstated bishop wanted his rents and legal perquisites, all difficult to collect, and many were the ponderous documents that passed on the subject. How justly pained sounds Charles's remonstrance on the default of payment of taxes to his friend, the city's lord!
"Therefore [he writes,] in consideration of these things, taking into account the terror of our departure to Brussels last January, we decide, my brother and I, that the payment of both gabelle and poll tax must be forced, and that we cannot permit the retarding of such taxes under any colour or pretence. At the request of our brother and cousin we order the inhabitants of the said territories to pay both gabelle and poll tax, all that is due from the time it was imposed and for the time to come, under penalty of the confiscation of their goods and their persons."
It was the old story of bricks without straw—taxes and rents for property ruthlessly destroyed were so easy. To this extent of tyranny had Duke Philip never gone, and undoubtedly the treatment of Liege was a step towards Charles's final disaster. So much hatred was excited against him that his adherents fell off one by one when his luck began to fail him.
No omen of misfortune was to be seen at this time, however. That month of November saw him master absolute wherever he was and he used his power autocratically. At Huy, he had a number of prisoners executed. At Louvain, at Brussels, he gave fresh examples of his relentlessness as an overlord.
[Footnote 1:] [Commines], ii., ch. xi. It was not far from the place where another Prince of Orange tried to cross the Meuse exactly a hundred years later.]
[Footnote 2:] [The] story of the "men of Franchimont" is questioned. Commines is the only authority for it.]
[Footnote 3:] [II]., ch. xiii.]
[Footnote 4:] [Commines], ii., ch. xiii.]
[Footnote 5:] [Oudenbosch], Veterum scriptorum, etc. Amplissima Collectio, ed. E. Martene, iv. Rerum Leodiensim. Opus Adriani de Veteri Busco, p. 1343. The writer acknowledges that the story is hearsay.]